What a fantastic day we had in Crosshill’s on Saturday at Naylor’s Brewery & Beer Emporium. Apples from far and wide were brought in by everyone from a couple of kilos in a carrier bag to several hundred Kgs in the back of a van.

12 massive sand bags were filled with the apples, it looked like a big ask at 10am with the small Heath Robinson scratting machine and 2 small old apple presses but we did it!

Somewhere near 4000 kgs of apples were converted into over 400 gallons of fresh zingy apple juice and will now be left to the Naylor Brothers to work there brewing magic to ferment it and convert into a slightly sparkling medium cider of approx 6% abv.

Hopefully it should be ready by April and we can have a Community Cider Sunday to try it!

How we did it:-

Scrump your apples! Scrumping is the collection or picking of apples sometime done surreptitiously at night! of course ours were all collected legally with permission!

Sort apples into buckets, removing rotten apples, leaves, twigs, slugs and the like and pass to the “Scratters”

pass all apples through the Heath Robinson Apple Scratter, this crushes and smashes the apples into pulp known as “pomace”

the pomace is then pressed to squeeze the apple juice out

collect this juice and strain into your fermenting vessel

add some yeast and allow to ferment for about a month

filter and bottle

leave for a couple of months then drink!

Of course we had to have some refreshment whilst working which was in the form of Naylor’s own Craven Brown Ale

and some Pork pies.

A big thanks must go out to all those who donated apples, came along on the day, helped out scratting, sorting, pressing, pouring and even quaffing a few of Naylor’s finest ales and of course to the Naylor Brothers and organisers for putting on such a fantastic Community event, can’t way to try the fruit’s of our labour!

4 Responses to How to make Cider – Naylor’s Community Cider Day

Mmmm, I could use a good Yorkshire Dales pork pie about now. Last time I was in Scotland I had a pork pie, but it could not compare with my previous experience in Yorkshire. And all the way over in Kansas I’d need to make my own if I want one. Bring on the recipe!